Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics eBook

In 1908 Sir Wilfrid, when a discerning electorate
had deprived him of a colleague whose political incapacity
had been completely demonstrated, became a party to
a deal by which he re-entered parliament. An
old friend took the liberty of asking Sir Wilfrid why
he wanted this associate back in the cabinet, only
to be told that “So-and-So never made any trouble
for me.” At least twice in the last four
years of his regime Sir Wilfrid, conscious of the waning
energies of his party, took advice outside of his immediate
circle as to what should be done; on both occasions
he rejected advice tendered to him because this involved
the inclusion in the cabinet of personalities that
might have disturbed the charmed serenity of that
circle. Sir Wilfrid preferred to have things as
they were, perhaps because his sense of reality warned
him that, so far as the duration of time during which
he would hold office was concerned, there probably
would not be any great difference between a government
wholly agreeable to him and one reconstituted to meet
the demand of the younger and more vigorous elements
in the party. In 1909, in a letter to a supporter
who had lost the party nomination for his constituency,
he gave premonition of his own fate: “What
has happened to you in your county will happen to
me before long in Canada. Let us submit with
good grace to the inevitable.”

The inevitable end in the ordinary course of events
would have been the going on of the party until it
died of dry rot and decay, as the Liberals had already
died in Ontario; but fortunately, both for the party
and for Laurier’s subsequent fame—­though
it may not have seemed so at the time—­emergence
of the reciprocity question gave it an opportunity
to fall on an issue which seemed to link up the end
of the regime with its heroic beginnings and to reinvest
the party with some of its lost glamor.

LAURIER: DEFEAT AND ANTI-CLIMAX

The defeat of the Liberals in September, 1911,
raised sharply the question of the party’s future
and the leadership under which it would face that
future. Speaking at St. Jerome toward the close
of the campaign Sir Wilfrid had stated positively
that if defeated he would retire. This declaration
of intention—­no doubt at the moment sincerely
made—­was designed to check the falling away
from Laurier’s leadership in Quebec, which was
becoming more noticeable as election day drew near.
But the appeal was ineffective.. The effective
opposition to Laurier in Quebec came not from Borden
or from Monk, the official leader of the French Conservatives,
but from Bourassa. Laurier and his lieutenants
fought desperately, but in vain, to break the strengthening
hold of the younger man on the sympathies of the French
electors. In Quebec the custom of the joint open
air political meeting is still popular, and at such
a concourse in St. Hyacinthe, an old Liberal stronghold,
Sir Wilfrid’s colleagues, Lemieux and Beland,